“Fuimus Troes” (Aeneid 2). The True Trojans (hereafter referred to as Fuimus Troes) was first published,
anonymously, in a quarto-sized edition, in London, 1633. Wood, the
seventeenth-century historian of Oxford, affirmed that Jasper Fisher was the
author of Fuimus Troes, and this
attribution has been widely accepted.[1]

Jasper
Fisher was born in Carleton, Bedfordshire in 1591, the son of William Fisher,
“deputy auditor for Yorkshire” (Foster 500), and Alice Roane of Wellingborough.
After matriculating at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (1607), Fisher obtained his BA
(1611), MA (1614) and BD and DD (1638). While still at Oxford, he contributed a
Latin poem to Epithalamia (1613), the
university’s volume celebrating the wedding of James I’s daughter Princess
Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine (see Appendix 1). In 1624, Fisher
became rector of St. Nicholas Church in the “somewhat straggling” village of
Wilden, Bedfordshire (Page, Counties
223), and, in 1627, married Elizabeth Sams. Their two children (Jasper and
Elizabeth) were baptized at Wilden.

In addition to Fuimus Troes, Fisher published sermons,
including The Priest’s Duty and Dignity
(1635), which argues that while priests should not be regarded as infallible
(in the Roman Catholic manner), nor should every believer assume the right to
interpret scripture according to his/her own lights. Notwithstanding its
promotion of Anglican views, the sermon could be read as implicitly criticising
the absolutist position espoused by Stuart monarchs. On the priest’s role as
mediator of God’s laws, Fisher insists it is “[t]he law which he speaks, not which he makes of which he is the lawyer, not the
law-giver” (16). Conversely, in True Law
of Free Monarchies (1598), James I (who equated the authority of kings with
that of bishops) had asserted: “Kings were the authors and makers of the laws,
and not the laws of the king”. Comparing these statements, it seems justifiable
to assume that Fisher was no mere mouthpiece for the Stuart polity.

In later life, according to a
manuscript note by Oldys, Fisher became blind, “whether from old age or an
accident is not known. Wood calls him “an ingenious man, as those that knew him
have divers times informed me”” (Bradley). Fisher’s death, in 1643, is recorded
on a monument on the north wall of the chancel in St. Nicholas Church (Page, Counties 226).

Dates of Composition and Performance.

Neither the date of composition
of Fuimus Troes, nor the date of its
one attested performance is known. Curran cites Brinkley’s assessment that
“1625 is probably the latest possible date [of composition] for Fuimus Troes” (261). This supposition is
based on the assumption that because the play contains a song in Scottish
dialect it was written with a view to pleasing King James I, who died in 1625
(see Bentley 304 and Hazlitt 447). However, the inclusion of a song in Scottish
dialect may well have pleased King Charles after 1625. Apparent analogical
references not only to the death of Prince Henry (1612; see 3.7.1.ff), but also
(arguably) to the disasters which befell Frederick V, the Elector Palatine
suggest that the play was written after 1620 when “Frederick’s forces were …
defeated at the Battle of White Mountain, outside Prague, on 8 November”
(Yates, Rosicrucian 34). In any case,
as Hopkins remarks: “It seems reasonable to assume [that the play’s] … dates of
composition and [original] performance … were close together” (39).

In the early seventeenth-century,
academics who wrote plays “tried to maintain their amateur profile by keeping
their works unpublished” (Elliott, Plays 181).
Fuimus Troes would have been “written
exclusively for the use of student actors, not for any profit that might be
gained from either the printed page or the professional stage” (181). This
would explain why, if the play was
written around (or several years before) 1625, it remained unpublished until
1633. It does not, however, explain why the play eventually was printed in that year. Possibly Fuimus Troes was restaged, or considered
for revival, in the early 1630s.

To consider this possibility, it
will be useful to discuss Cartwright’s The
Royal Slave. The latter play was performed in Christ Church hall, at Oxford
University, before King Charles and Queen Henrietta. It received “a warm
reception from the entire court, especially the queen, who made a special
request to have it performed by her own company … at Hampton Court the
following January” (Elliott, Drama
652-3). It must be acknowledged that The
Royal Slave is a very different play to the comparatively dry Fuimus Troes. Nonetheless, there is
evidence here of a relationship between successful academic drama and
subsequent re-presentations at court, around the Christmas season. Royal
attendance at academic drama was more frequent under James and Charles than it
had been with Elizabeth. Consequently, academic drama can be said to have had
more contact with the court after 1603 than during the Elizabethan period.
Certainly, “Oxford’s proximity to London ensured that the worlds of court,
capital and university remained in close connection” (Fincham 180). In this
context, it is worth noting thatShakespeare’s
Cymbeline (which, like Fuimus Troes, features an encounter
between Romans and Britons on British soil around the time of the birth of
Christ) was revived “on Charles I’s return from his Scottish coronation [1633]”
(Kerrigan 133) and performed “at court on 1 January 1634, when, according to
the Master of the Revels, it was “well liked by the King” (Warren 6). Also, the
inclusion of over a dozen songs in Fuimus
Troes, in addition to “triumphs” (3.7.49.sd) and a masque, suggests the
play was written (or had been revised and extended) with a view to making its
otherwise rather old-fashioned (Senecan) treatment of a historical subject as
entertaining for a courtly audience as possible. Bearing in mind Charles I’s
Scottish coronation of 1633, a song in Scottish dialect may have been included
by special request, for “from the accession of the new dynasty it became
increasingly fashionable for the university to produce verses to commemorate
the births, marriages, deaths and peregrinations of the Stuarts, with as many
as eight collections being published in the decade after 1630” (Fincham 180).

Sources.

The play’s list of Dramatis Personae cites the main
historical sources. Camillus and Brennus, we are told, come from Livy’s history
Book 5. The majority of the remaining characters derive from either Julius
Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars
or Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the
Kings of Britain.[2]
Whoever composed the list of Dramatis
Personae was meticulous, not only listing two “lad[ies] mentioned” who do
not appear onstage during the play, but also listing the character of Cassibelane
twice: once as Caesar’s
“Cassibellaunus” and again as Geoffrey’s “Cassibelane”. The author of this list
was either careless or keen to assert an equivalence between Caesar and
Geoffrey’s texts as “history”.

Indeed, I feel Fuimus Troes may offer more to the
modern reader as a dramatisation of the historiographical contest between
native and classical (Latin) texts for discursive eminence in the early decades
of the seventeenth-century than to the modern playgoer as an early modern
representation of historical characters in conflict. Investigation of
character-psychology is not a priority in the play. Only Rollano, the cowardly
Belgian who prefers tackling dead capons to live Romans, Eulinus, the lovesick
noble given to neo-platonic excess in his utterance and Spenserian intensity in
his dreams, and Nennius, the British champion who wins Caesar’s sword in
one-to-one combat, emerge as memorable characters. However, the play becomes
more fascinating if its two main sources (Caesar and Geoffrey) are regarded as
the real protagonist and antagonist among the Dramatis Personae. And though the traitor Androgeus, as character,
may not captivate an audience with his pallid vacillations, as a
Geoffrey-derived creation he attracts the informed reader’s eye by appearing
onstage with his Caesarian double, Mandubratius (Mandubrace). For Mandubratius
and Androgeus are the same “historical” character under two different names. In
such ways, “the play calls attention [both] to its use of Galfridian
non-history and to its own story as a mixture” (Curran 22).

Of
course, Fuimus Troes has other
sources besides those cited in the list of Dramatis
Personae. The playwright paraphrases Tacitus, Lucian and others, among
Latin authors. He also includes abundant echoes of early modern English poets
and dramatists such as Spenser, Shakespeare and Kyd. Other details derive from
English/British chroniclers and antiquarians such as Holinshed and Camden. In
addition, eulogistic imagery familiar from the many masques and pageants written
after the accession of King James in 1603 is often employed by Fisher as
patriotic ammunition. Details of such borrowings and adaptations can be found
in the notes accompanying the text of the play in this edition.

Type of Play.

Under conditions affected by strict state censorship (as obtained under
the Tudor-Stuart polities), the distancing effect inherent in “history plays”
allowed playwrights to comment obliquely on contemporary political issues in
relative safety. Also, a dramatist might claim he did not seek to criticise the
existing regime in his history play, but rather wished to demonstrate
“universal” laws of government in a historical setting. After all, “kings, by
understanding these laws, could rule wisely and well” (Ribner 19). Nonetheless,
“historical eras were chosen for dramatisation particularly because they
offered direct parallels with the events of the dramatists’ own times” (17).

As mentioned, a frequent “source
of entertainment for the Stuart royalties was provided by the plays performed
at the Oxford and Cambridge colleges” (Boas 401). Given the perceived function
of the history play as a means of recommending, in acceptable terms, a style of
government to a monarch, it comes as no surprise to find that many academic
plays were history plays. However, from 1605-1636, Cambridge “had the monopoly
of the royal presence at its entertainments” (409). We can assume, therefore,
that the performance of Fuimus Troes
at Magdalen did not receive a royal audience. But academic plays did not require
a royal audience to justify their existence: “In the training of young men for
public life, either in the church or state, plays were regarded as a branch of
rhetoric whose educational function was to hone the skills of the future
preacher, orator and statesman in the classical style” (Elliott, Plays 180). Fuimus Troes, then, may not have been written to advise a king, but
to assist in the training of young men who later would be in positions where
they would be called upon to advise their monarch or his council. As we know,
Fisher not only became a rector after leaving Oxford, he also preached sermons
which touched on controversial areas of doctrine.

As for why an academic history
play like Fuimus Troes should contain
so many songs, it appears that at Oxford, in the Tudor-Stuart period, bachelors
were sometimes admitted to Master’s status only on condition that they write a
play well-stocked with songs (see Elliot, Plays
179). This provided Oxford’s musical scholars (including choristers) with an
opportunity to perform new work before a large audience.

Completing ignoring the play’s
musical content, Ribner regards Fuimus
Troes as “an academic exercise in the vernacular [which] cannot be said to
have had … much influence … upon … the mainstream of English drama”. Yet, he
concedes:

The play is interesting as a late
survival of the type of rigid imposition of Senecan form on chronicle matter
[as, for example, in The Misfortunes of
Arthur [1587-8]]. Fisher’s play does, however, show some influence of the
popular dramatic tradition in that the serious historical matter is combined
with a romantic love affair and with comic interludes provided by a cowardly
clown (228).

Aspects of Fuimus Troes may certainly be regarded as a throwback to
Elizabethan Senecan tragedy. Its patriotic welding of “British” (i.e.
Galfridian) material to a classical form follows the practice inaugurated by
“the first original English tragedy extant [based on the] Senecan model, Gorboduc” (Charlton 140-1). In lieu of
presenting action, the many “long, static and declamatory speeches” (Cuddon
806) in both plays strive for rhetorical effect at the expense of the
(relative) naturalism cultivated by commercial dramatists after Marlowe.
Similarly, stichomythia tends to appear in plays regarded as Senecan (see Fuimus Troes 5.1.22ff). While this
device may be “highly effective in the creation of tension and conflict”
(Cuddon 864), it can also make characters seem like interchangeable conduits of
rhetorical technique rather than distinct individuals. In addition, the authors
of Gorboduc and Fuimus Troes appear to have designed their plays to deliver clear
moral messages. Characters in both plays assert that national tragedy follows
private rebellion. At the end of Gorboduc,
surviving Britons are told: “These mischiefes spring when rebells will arise, /
To worke revenge and iudge their princes fact, / This, this ensues, when noble
men do faile / In loyall trouth, and subiectes will be kinges” (5.2.242-5; in
Cunliffe). Fisher’s Androgeus likewise says: “Thus, civil war by me and
factious broils / Deface this goodly land” (5.5.1-2). Admittedly, Androgeus is
a traitor: this speech might be read as expressive of his remorse (and so not
primarily didactic). But the patriotic Belinus sententiously concurs: “No way
half so quick / To ruinate kingdoms as by home-bred strife. Thus, while we
single fight, we perish all” (5.2.8-10). Also, Fisher’s play, like Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (an “amalgam of Seneca
and popular tradition” [Charlton 144]), has Mercury guide the ghosts of
illustrious soldiers from the classical underworld back “to this upper sky” (Fuimus, induction 38) to watch the
living wreak revenge.

In place of the customary Senecan
moralising chorus, however, Fisher puntuates the main action with songs, dances,
triumphs and a masque (though the first song in Act 2 Scene 8 strikingly
resembles a Greek tragic chorus). Given that opera began as “chanted tragedy”
(Cuddon 616) and “musicologists … have charted in the masque the development of
a musical style which, in projecting the words of songs in recitative and
arioso setting, may have contributed to the rise of opera” (Lindley ix-x),
Fisher’s play may be given some credit for a role in the development and
combination of existing dramatic forms which culminated in opera.

Major thematic concerns.

James as
“Second Brute”.

The Tudor monarchs “exploited their Welsh ancestry to
claim descent from the early British kings as a way of legitimising their rule”
(Wymer 4), basing their claims largely on genealogical “evidence” contained in
Geoffrey’s history. Then, in 1603, James I became king of an ambiguous
amalgamation of realms. As a result:

just when all this body of
[Galfridian] mythical material was beginning to be historically discredited by
the emergence of “modern” historiography and proper antiquarian research, it
was being reinvigorated poetically by the reunion of Britain under James, …
[who] was hailed as the second Brute in the pageantry which accompanied his
Royal entry into London in 1604 and in many other poems and pageants over the
next few years (Wymer 5-6).

Thus, Munday’s The
Triumphs of Reunited Britania (1605) declares that James, “a second Brute”,
is descended from the first (Trojan) Brute “by the blessed marriage of
Margaret, eldest daughter of King Henrie the Seaventh, to Iames the fourth king
of Scotland” (47-9). James, however, was a better Brute, for “whereas the first
Brutus had “severed and divided” the kingdom of Britain among his sons, the new
Stuart king would make “one happy Britannia again, peace and quietness bringing
that to pass which war nor any other means could attain unto”” (King 41).

With this in mind, it seems legitimate to ask if Fuimus Troes endorses James as a “second
Brute”. As Ronan observes, history plays “provided … audiences … with the
aesthetic pleasure of ironic endings” (16); i.e. plays that “end” happily end
ironically for an audience which knows that history holds unhappiness in store
for some of the characters onstage at the play’s close. Obviously, this device
affords not only “aesthetic pleasure” for an audience, but also a means of
sending a message to a reigning (currently happy) monarch. In Fuimus Troes, Caesar is told by Hulacus,
a druid soothsayer, “Be Saturn, and so thou shalt not be Tarquin” (5.1.45).
Primed by Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (among
many other works), the audience knows that Caesar, as ruler, will become, or
come to be perceived as, a tyrant (as did Tarquin) and invite assassination by
Brutus. (The name “Brutus” here is another source of irony; Caesar—or James,
the second Brute—is told: “Rule as Saturn or be killed by another second Brute…”). So while the play’s conclusion seems to
celebrate the union of Caesar and Cassibelane, it indicates elsewhere their
shared destinies as would-be absolutists. (Charles I, of course, was to meet a
fate comparable to Caesar’s in 1642.)

Prince Henry
and Chivalric Values.

Nennius, “a character among Geoffrey’s most brazen
fictions … symbolised not only British identity and defiance against Rome, but also
continuity [in that he] objected to
the renaming of Troynovant into what was to become “London”” (Curran 162;
stress added). Likewise, in Fuimus Troes,
Nennius represents continuity, in a Stuart context, with the Elizabethan era,
espousing Spenserian-Elizabethan chivalric, militant Protestant values. In this
he resembles James I’s son Prince Henry, who “ever much reverenced [the] memory
and government” of Elizabeth I (Sir John Holles, in Strong 2). As a result of
his “reverence” for Elizabeth I’s reign, Henry’s court tended to be the
focus-point for a faction of opposition to James’s policies.

Given the positive portrayal of Nennius in Fuimus Troes as a Spenserian chivalric
hero, we might suppose that Fisher, like Drayton, was in the pro-Henry / anti-James
camp. “For Drayton’s generation (and the one that followed),” says Helgerson,
an “intense nostalgia for the age of Elizabeth went hand in hand with a disdain
for the Stuart monarch and his court” (129). Drayton, it should be noted,
dedicated Polyolbion (1612) to Prince
Henry. Indeed, poets at this time frequently reiterated “themes of laudation of
Henry living and lament for him dead … [identifying him] with other worthies,
like Hector … [and celebrating] his prowess in the lists” (Strong 19).[3]
Fisher also compares Nennius with Hector (3.7.19) and shows his knightly
prowess in single combat with Caesar himself (3.2). It is worth observing,
then, that Prince Henry was closely connected with Oxford: “a census [of
scholars at the university] was drawn up [in 1610] … at the request of the
prince of Wales” (Porter 35). It is also known that “the prince’s college
chapel of Magdalen [Fisher’s college] was draped in black” for Henry’s funeral
(Fincham 180).

Reading Nennius as analogue for Henry, then, must lead us
to view Fuimus Troes as, to some
extent, a challenge to the authority of James I, in that it presents feudal
values (i.e. values consistent with a belief in the limited authority of a monarch) in a more positive light than that
accorded to values consistent with a belief in the absolute powers of the monarch. Here, I feel, it would be helpful
to consider the comparable tension between feudal and absolutist values which
exists in a prototype for Spenser’s epic The
Faerie Queene: Tasso’s Jerusalem
Liberated. In Book Five of the latter work:

Rinaldo slays Gernando [another
noble] … in a fight over honour and precedence … Goffredo [the king] resolves
to punish the offender … [But Rinaldo] refuses even to submit to trial … For
Rinaldo, the freeborn nobleman, submission to the law is a sign of servile
subjection. The state and its claims must give way before the higher claim of
honour and lineage … Tasso leaves no doubt concerning the official allegiance
of his poem. It supports Goffredo … [But the notion that] Tasso’s … allegiance
[to absolutist state values] is only official, that his poem betrays a ‘secret
solidarity’ with the feudal, romantic ideology that it ostensibly rejects, has
been a commonplace of criticism almost since the poem was issued (Helgerson
45-6).

Fisher’s play conforms to the same pattern. After all, it
is virtually inevitable that the character who heroically (and successfully)
challenges no less a personage than Julius Caesar to single combat and takes
part in an exciting duel onstage (or on page) will cut a more dashing figure
than the representative of state values (i.e. the king), whatever the
“official” line of the poem or play in question. Indeed, this “pattern” may be
a generic feature common to epics and revenge tragedies exploring heroic-epic
values. Choosing to represent Prince Henry as Nennius, then, as an application
of this generic “feature”, may be regarded as a political gesture on the
dramatist’s part.

James/Charles as Second Augustus.

The relationship of Britain, or England, or whatever name we choose
to give to James’s ambiguous realm(s), to classical and Catholic Rome is of
central importance to the play. Caesar’s Rome is the Britons’ enemy, but it
also represents (as imperial power) a model of excellence to be imitated and
surpassed. “In place of Geoffrey’s belief that the Britons resembled the Romans
because both descended from Troy, [the governing elite of Stuart Britain] began
to embrace the idea that the Roman mission to conquer and civilize had translated westwards and been inherited
by Britain” (Kerrigan 114).

In this context, it is significant that James’s “accession medal is
the first example of a British monarch adopting the title and dress of a Roman
emperor” (King 81). At the pageant welcoming him to London, James was “hailed
as a new Augustus … The character of Roman Emperor is [thus] imposed over that
of Trojan Prince [“second Brute”] to herald a great imperial reign” (Parry 14).
Identification with Augustus, though, not only involves the presentation of the
monarch as an emperor who ushers in a new golden age of peace, but may also
give rise to concern over the political dangers associated with an absolutist
model of rule. For “a state which breaks out of the shell of an ageing empire
and claims its autonomy—as Henry VIII broke free of the power of Rome … is
likely to be imprinted not just with the ideology but the vices of the
apparatus that fostered it” (Kerrigan 114). The growing tendency for English
monarchs to represent themselves as Roman emperors represented a clear threat
to those who favoured a parliamentarian system. This threat became more serious
under James who consistently espoused his belief in his divine right to rule
absolutely and reached its presumptuous apogee under Charles. For example,
Rubens’s panels for Whitehall, commissioned by Charles, represented James not
only as a Roman emperor but as a Roman emperor turned god: “the central oval of
the ceiling shows the apotheosis of James … [the king is] borne heavenwards on
an imperial eagle” (Parry 28). Like the Romans Julius and Augustus, and the
Stuart James, Charles, such imagery implies, is a future god. Gods do not need
parliaments to ratify their decrees.

At the Christmas festivities of 1631-2, Charles played Caesar; he led
captive kings in Aurelian Townshend’s Albion’s
Triumph, and bought Mantegna’s Triumph
of Caesar in 1629. This painting, along with twelve portraits of Roman
emperors by Titian, “held a particular significance for Charles, for … he was
increasingly disposed to cast himself in an imperial role as Emperor of Great
Britain, a style already adopted by King James but more grandiosely assumed by
Charles” (Parry 49). Albion’s Triumph
ends in the joint apotheosis of Charles and Henrietta.

Turning to Fuimus Troes, we
find expressed the idea that the Britons can be beaten by the Romans only
because a number of British tribes have gone over to Caesar’s side (5.2.5-10).
But the British tribes have defected not through fear of Caesar but in
opposition to their king’s tyranny: Cassibelane usurps the claims of Androgeus
and Themantius to the throne (at least, according to Androgeus and Themantius),
refuses to compromise on the question of where Eulinus should be tried for
killing Hirildas, and persecutes the tribal chieftain Mandubrace, apparently
for political reasons. Whether Cassibelane is in the right or wrong on these
issues, the obvious implication is that it is his autocratic style of
government that sets in motion the chain of events that leads to the British
defeat by Caesar. Had Cassibelane’s “parliament” been given its due, the Romans
could have been repulsed. As Themantius pointedly declares: “A body politic
must on two legs stand” (5.5.37).

Translatio Imperii.

The concept of translatio imperii (the translation of
empire) became “extremely influential in the Middle Ages, when the Roman empire
was ‘translated’ first to the Franks under Charlemagne and subsequently to the
Germans as the Holy Roman Empire, and in a rather different form in the
Renaissance, when Spain, France and England all saw themselves as heirs to Rome
… [In the use the Tudors made of Geoffrey’s material,] we can see a deliberate
imitation of Virgil’s use of the legend of the Trojan Aeneas to support the
political position of Augustus. Just as empire had passed from Troy to Rome, so
now it passed to New Troy, London” (Rivers 59, 61).

The Renaissance historian
Panvinio “locates the main triumphal succession not in the papacy but in the
Holy Roman Empire … from Romulus to Charles V” (Miller 47). Charles V (“the
second Charlemagne”), on being elected as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, was
perceived as “the potential Lord of the World … due to the Hapsburg dynastic
marriage policy which had brought … vast territories under his rule” (Yates, Astraea 1), “territories more extensive
than the ancient Roman empire” (Miller 2).

This reading of history extended
into the reign of Charles I. George Lauder, a Scot and a “robust poetic
supporter of Charles in his early reign” (Miller 120), represented Charles as
another Charlemagne: “his royall brow / Crown’d with triumphant bayes …may HEE
… take his place / In Charlemaigne’s fair chayre” (Miller 120-1). Poets such as
Lauder, then, were asserting that a new “Charles the Great” was the heir to the
British throne at the time Fuimus Troes
was written (if a date of composition based on supposed analogical references
to Frederick’s downfall is accepted [see below]). Also, this new Charlemagne
occupied the throne when the play was finally published. Hence, it is
intriguing to find, in the play’s opening scene, Brennus (who “throughout the
sixteenth-century and well into the seventeenth … continued to be invoked as a figure for England’s / Britain’s independence from, rivalry with,
and primordial superiority to Rome” [Schwyzer 15]), referring anachronistically to “Charles his
wain” (line 17) as the starting point for his victorious campaign against Rome.
Charles’s Wain, of course, was an old name for the Great Bear constellation. As
Berry and Archer observe:

An
important figurative strand within Union-inspired literature expands on
classical allusions to the British as ‘the nations on whom the Pole Star looks
down’, whose island ‘lies under the Great Bear’, the constellation ‘that
circleth ever in her place’ … Following theacceptance of Copernicus’s hypothesis of the earth’s planetary status,
both the new Britain and its ruler are equated with the polar stars as the
‘loadstone’ or fixed points within the newly mobile globe (124).

With a new Charlemagne reigning
at the new imperial/geographical centre of the world, Charles’s empire
supersedes that of old Rome (previously regarded, at least by the ancient
Romans themselves, as the centre of the known world), thereby “reversing the
Roman conquest of Britain” (Miller 121). In this way, Charles may be said to
“appropriate the triumphal boast of Julius Caesar: ‘hee shall come and see, and
overcome’ (Miller 121; quoting Lauder). Fisher participates in the same
discursive field, cancelling Caesar’s boast by having Caesar himself admit,
regarding his British campaign: “Nor can I write now, ‘I came over, / And I
overcame’” (3.4.19-20). Also, Fisher interrogates the notion that Caesar
discovered Britain by implying that the pole star lures Caesar to Britain precisely so that Rome’s imperial authority
may be transmitted: “I long to stride / This Hellespont [i.e. the Channel]”
declares Caesar in Act 1, “Disclosing to our empire unknown lands / Until the
arctic star for zenith stands” (2.33-6). That is, the arctic star will not only
magnetically distort the borders of the Roman Empire and de-centre Rome, but
the island it shines upon (Britain) will replace Rome as the “zenith” of the
world. In asserting that the Britons are no less “true Trojans” than the
Romans, and in showing Nennius the British hero defeating Julius Caesar in
single combat, taking Caesar’s sword as a sign of victory to be paraded in a
triumphal procession, Fisher announces that the imperial mantle is being
translated from pagan (or Catholic) Rome to Christian (Protestant) Britain. Thus,
the “triumphs” in Act 3 Scene 7, though they appear only as a stage direction
in the text of the play, in performance would presumably play a major role,
representing the moment of translatio
imperii.

The Golden Age (and the Marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V,
Elector Palatine).

The Christian Holy Roman empire was to be created by (ostensibly)
peaceful means, not conquest. Charles V “had providentially inherited territories in Europe which recalled the
Roman Empire [and] … did not entertain the ambition of achieving a world empire
by conquering other states” (Yates, Astraea
25-6; emphasis added). But the dream of Charles V peacefully ruling a
united Christian world ended with the reformation. After that, individual
national monarchs “representing the ordered rule of the One within their
individual realms—took over something of the imperial role” (Astraea 28). James was represented as
having providentially united the island of Britain for the first time since the
birth of Christ. Thus, “the small world of the Tudor union [of the houses of
Lancaster and York] and the Tudor pax”
and the slightly larger world of (symbolic) British union under James and the
Jacobean pax “have behind them the
vaster European perspectives of the Hapsburg union and the Hapsburg pax; and behind these again is the
august concept of Holy Roman Empire, reaching out in ever-widening influence to
include the whole globe” (54).

James I saw dynastic union as the
means by which a Christian empire could expand without recourse to arms.
Accordingly, he decided his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, should marry
“Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, … the senior Elector of the Holy
Roman Empire who … was [putatively] descended from Charlemagne” (Strong 56-7).
An account published in Heidelberg in 1613 of a masque intended to be performed
at the marriage of Elizabeth and Frederick provides

insight as to how the Palatine
match was viewed … The argument [of the masque states:] … ‘although the poets
say, divisus ab orbe Britannus; yet
the marriage, made in heaven, and consummated on earth, of the only daughter of
this wise King of Great Britain with the Serene Prince Frederick V, Elector of
Palatine … had given occasion … to believe, that one day, if it pleased God,
the world (quitting its errors) would come to give recognition to Truth which
resides solely in England and the Palatinate’ (Strong 135).

In other words, the marriage of
Elizabeth and Frederick brought the dream of a world Protestant empire one step
closer to fulfillment.

Early modern plays featuring Roman characters set in the decades
before the birth of Christ participate in the belief that Christ awaited the
coming of Augustus in order to be born into a world stable enough to facilitate
the growth of Christianity (see 5.6.62-3 and note). A further implication of
this belief in the providential function of imperially-ensured peace was that,
in the Stuart period, the creation of a reformed Christian world empire (larger
than that governed by Augustus) would see the return of Christ and the
completion of history. Consequently, Fuimus
Troes includes not only several references to Astraea, the goddess of
justice whom Virgil had predicted, in Eclogue 4, would return to earth for a
new golden age (see 3.8.16), but also millennial imagery (5.2.16-21). The fact
that Fuimus Troes takes its title
from Virgil’s Aeneid becomes highly
significant in this context, for the latter work had come to be seen as “a
semi-sacred poem glorifying the historical framework of the Saviour’s birth”
(Yates, Astraea 1). Moreover, from a
Christian perspective, the reference to the prophecies of Daniel in the final
scene (“The world’s fourth empire Britain doth embrace” [line 20]) suggests
that, after the final defeat of Rome, the reign of Christ on earth will begin.

However, hopes for a reformed Christian empire were shown to be
unrealistic following the outbreak in Europe of the Thirty Years War around
1620, and the play seems to allude to this disappointment. The heroine of Fuimus Troes, Landora, is referred to as
a “phoenix” (4.2.40; as Yates points out, “the return of the golden age and the
rebirth of the phoenix are symbols with parallel meanings” [Astraea 38]). But instead of performing
a glorious resurrection, this phoenix commits suicide after being involved in a
somewhat sordid subplot. Eulinus, a Briton, impersonating the man Landora
loved, had been sleeping with her. In the notes to 1.4.85-7, it is suggested
that this subplot refers analogically to Frederick V claiming Elizabeth as his bride
on the strength of his descent from Charlemagne. Here, there is only space to
observe that the name “Landora” is an anagram of “a Roland”. A Roland, it might
be felt, must love (and serve) a (descendant of) Charlemagne. In any case, when
his country has been ravaged as a result of his actions, Eulinus laments:
“Shall ensigns be displayed, and nations rage / About so vile a wretch?”
(4.2.34-5). As mentioned, the Thirty Years War was to devastate Europe
following Frederick’s attempt to reign as King of Bohemia. In the aftermath of
the Battle of White Mountain, “propaganda pamphlets against Frederick …
delighted to show him as a poor fugitive [“a wretch”] with one of his stockings
coming down” (Yates, Rosicrucian 34).
Certainly, events following his marriage to Elizabeth showed that Frederick was
no Charlemagne.

The play concludes not with the dynastic union of Britain and Rome
through marriage, but with the “masculine embrace” of Cassibelane and Caesar
(Mikalachki 96-7). Translatio imperii,
it seems, is achieved between men at a symbolic level (via exchanged gifts
[5.6.36-40], trophies won in single combat, etc.)
not through men and women in a biological manner.

National
identity.

If England depends, to an extent,
on Scotland as other for self-definition, what happens when England “merges”
with Scotland? Or is English identity, insofar as it can be said to exist at
all, simply the product of such mergers? “‘My muse is rightly of the English
strain, / That cannotlong one fashion
entertain.’ Drayton mocks both himself and the English for their lack of any
single fixed identity. Yet in this self-mockery there is also pride” (Helgerson
14). By definition, an empire is a nation with an identity crisis, a notional
space with shifting boundaries. To become (or extend) an empire is to admit
change. “To be like the Greeks [or the Trojans] … to base one’s identity and
the identity of one’s country on a project of imitative self-transformation is
precisely to adopt “the English strain”, as Drayton defines it” (14). To
possess a fluid identity is to possess a recipe for successful imperialism. The
mission of world rule is transferred from Rome to Britain because Britain
possesses the more flexible identity; put another way: Britain lacks a sense of identity even more than
the Romans do.

Are the Britons savages or
Trojans? Caesar’s spy, Volusenus, describes the Britons as exotic barbarians:
“their statures tall and big, / With blue-stained skins, and long, black,
dangling hair / Promise a barbarous fierceness” (2.4.10-12). “The catalogue of
British forces offers similar imagery, as the Ordovices are said to ‘rush
half-naked on their foes’ [2.5.43]. But British warriors are elsewhere referred
to as ‘worthy [k]nights’ [2.8.4]” (Curran 23). Nennius is a chivalric hero,
fighting alongside cannibals who “gnaw and suck / Their enemies’ bones”
(2.5.62-3). If they are descended from Trojans, these Britons no longer act
like it. As Samuel Purchas asks ina
marginal note of 1625: “Were not wee our selves made and not borne civill in
our Progenitors dayes? and were not Caesars Britaines as brutish as Virginians?
The Romane swords were best teachers of civilitie to this & other Countries
neere us” (in Wymer 4). The alliteration Purchas found so ready to hand
(“Britaines … brutish)” should be noted. As a result of ongoing developments in
historiographical method, Britain’s Trojan ancestry (via Brute) had become
material for self-mocking word-play. Through its fusion of Latin and “British”
sources, Fuimus Troes participates in
this self-mockery (for example, see 3.8.38 for a comparable equation of Britons
with “brutes”) at the same time that it refuses to relinquish the notion that
the Britons, no less than the Romans, are “true Trojans”.

Editorial Procedures.

I have based this edition on the
quarto edition of Fuimus Troes
(1633). Spelling and punctuation have been modernised. In some cases,
vocabulary has been (silently) modernised. Elisions in the original have also
been silently regularised, except where metre would be affected by the change.
The “-ed” form is used for unstressed terminations in past tenses and past
participles, and “-èd” for stressed. Unaccented vowels have occasionally been
given accents to correct what I regard as faulty metre. I have also corrected
what I consider to be obvious errors (such changes are referred to in the
relevant footnotes). Square brackets enclose any additions to or changes in the
stage directions.

It will be noticed that this
edition contains a great many notes. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, I have not included a glossary. Therefore, every word which I felt a
modern reader might not understand is glossed in a note below the text.
Secondly, the play contains a great many classical allusions which require
explanation for a modern reader. Thirdly, there has been very little criticism
written about this play. Therefore, I have attempted to include every salient
piece of commentary I could find, distributed in relevant footnotes. Hence,
this edition functions as a compilation of existing criticism on Fuimus Troes. Finally, as explained in
the introduction, I find it useful to regard Fisher’s sources (especially
Geoffrey and Caesar) as characters in the play. To enable the reader to discern
these “characters” beneath their disguises, I have given perhaps more examples
of “source-passages” than is customary in most editions.